Is The Digital Degree the Future?
27 Jun
The Economist published a thought-provoking piece on whether the future of higher education was a digital degree; June 28th 2014.
The article combined three key points – briefly summarized: 1. the university model has remained unchanged for years – the lecturing, the cramming, and the examinations that follow are more or less the experience of college. 2. Funding crises are now a concern as costs skyrocket, and students pay larger than ever fees to attend an institution. 3. There is a digital revolution in play.
Does all this mean that universities will start switching over to giving out distance degrees – acquired from classes with a lecturer standing all alone in an auditorium, teaching his distant students via streaming web? This may indeed work out to be a solution for the financial concerns that many universities have. It would also allow institutions to streamline their valuable resources into research and other developmental projects that may in future benefit humanity in some way.
But what are the cons? Students will be so far removed from the university “experience”. That experience of finding one’s own way to class in a large campus, speaking to a lecturer in real-time on a person-to-person basis, to ask for help, or simply discuss the newly acquired knowledge, figuring out which campus groups to join and socializing with friends – these are all features which are unavailable, as of yet, through digitization.
It is a tough debate. Can it happen? We’d love to hear your thoughts!
With the world evolving so fast, it has become extremely important to embrace digital degrees as much as possible. This digitization would continuously increase and the faster we accept the change, the better it is for us to use it effectively in our careers.